The diminutive artist was equipped with two guitars, a reel-to-reel, a projector, a metronome and a tambourine. Some of these items, which I can only assume were the “spooks”, baffled me when I entered the Corpus Playrooms. After a tuneless but strongly rhythmic opening number (a medley entitled “Jack the Ripper”), Rubini moved smoothly into sets of shrieky blues with exquisitely written lyrics. At various points we were regaled by stories, ghost noises on top of recordings of his own – one man can only play so many instruments, surely – and a strangely plaintive cover of “Lydia the Tattooed lady”.

White noise served as a back note throughout, providing a purposeful atmospheric intensity that was only enhanced later as an animated series on the projector accompanied a wordless ballad. Rubini straddled several genres with this varied performance: blues, the circus, theatre… perhaps the most apt term is a cabaret. His energy as a performer never failed to amaze, and even when he had to rewind his reel-to-reel – manually, naturally – it seemed as if it had all been planned. He gauged the audience well, and would occasionally break out of his dry witticisms and into a smile that reminded us of the mischievous ruffian beneath the macabre hair dye.

Unfortunately, I was almost forced to knock this review down to three stars purely because of the highly unnecessary inclusion of the nefarious Toby Parker-Rees and his self-indulgent clowning – but why let that spoil an otherwise excellent evening?

A lone performer, a lengthy set and a truly original act, Rubini did well to return back after graduating in order to share thisbizarre spectacle. The whole thing inspired a lot of adjectives, as is evident by this point. He joked at one point, “my material is utterly diverse”; I echo that sentiment wholeheartedly.